Steve Bannon, who is no stranger to controversy, faced a torrent of reproval when it was revealed not long ago that he had praised a detestable novel envisioning France invaded by an armada of brown-skinned migrants from India. The French novel is called “The Camp of the Saints,” and Bannon recommended it on several occasions when he was executive chairman of Breitbart News, to justify what he perceived as a mortal threat that whites face from immigration.

The book, published in the 1970s, had existed for decades as an obscure cornerstone of the utmost fringes of white racism. The Indian children in the novel were referred to as “little monsters,” and the adults were described as sexual maniacs who filled their ships with “rivers of sperm, streaming over bodies, oozing between breasts, and buttocks, and thighs, and lips, and fingers.” The novel ended with hundreds of thousands of them taking over France and, by extension, the West. When it came out in the United States, Kirkus Reviews noted that “the publishers are presenting ‘The Camp of the Saints’ as a major event, and it probably is, in much the same sense that Mein Kampf was a major event.”

Bannon, now a senior adviser to President Donald Trump, made his glowing comments during radio programs he hosted in 2015 and 2016. But his comments were brief and in passing. The most enthusiastic endorsement of the book from anyone at Breitbart, and certainly the longest endorsement, came from a young reporter who wrote a gushing 4,000-word article that said “all around the world, events seem to be lining up with the predictions of the book.” The article, which neglected to mention that “The Camp of the Saints” is widely regarded as utterly racist, merely described it as controversial, and made conspiratorial parallels between its fictional characters and Pope Francis, Marco Rubio, and even Glenn Beck.

The Camp of The Saints

The Breitbart reporter was Julia Hahn, a Bannon protégé who followed him into the White House as a special assistant to President Trump. Bannon and other alt-right figures in the West Wing, including Sebastian Gorka, have received enormous amounts of criticism for espousing ideas that are seen as racist or ridiculous. Gorka is reported to be leaving the White House, and there have been reports that Bannon might be edged out, too. But Hahn has gotten almost no notice for writing what appears to be the longest and most laudatory article about “The Camp of the Saints” that has appeared in the American media in recent years. The few in-depth stories about her getting a job at the White House have mostly focused on her lashing criticism of Paul Ryan, the House speaker whose conservative positions on immigration were far too permissive for Bannon, Hahn, and the rest of Breitbart.

At a glance, Hahn is an outlier among outliers. She was raised in Beverly Hills, attended a private high school, and the only wisp of political activity in her adolescence was a decidedly liberal, pro-immigration gesture: She raised money for a group that brought foreign orphans to the United States. She majored in philosophy at the University of Chicago, and the sole public trace of her time there is a video of a panel discussion in which she discussed Michel Foucault’s idea that psychoanalysis stigmatizes human sexuality.

Not long after she was appointed to the White House at the age of just 25, one of her college friends reacted by writing on Facebook, “It’s weird because she was always very nice and it’s disappointing when seemingly nice people turn out to be Nazis/Nazi-adjacent.” Another friend asked, “WTF happened???”

The question of what happened offers an opportunity of sorts. There has been a lot of discussion about countering extremism and identifying extremists before they do something that harms themselves or the nation. How do young people become radicalized? The preferred means for answering these questions are not mysterious — find out the ideas that young people are exposed to, find out the social environment they are raised in, and work from there. This framework has been applied mostly to Islamic extremism, with the goal of figuring out why some Muslims become terrorists.

But the tools of “countering violent extremism,” as it’s known, work extremely well for figuring out the riddle of rich white kids who turn to the fringes of the right. How does someone who raised money for foreign orphans write, a few years later, a screed for Breitbart headlined “Muslim Immigration Puts Half a Million U.S. Girls at Risk of Genital Mutilation”? One of the first things you would seek to do, in the effort to understand the creation of this extremist, is to investigate the place where she was raised. It turned out that I didn’t need to search far, because I grew up less than a mile from Hahn’s home, and attended the same high school.

An athletic field at Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, California. The private school, attended by Julia Hahn, costs about $40,000 a year for tuition and boasts a high success rate in getting its students admitted into Ivy League universities.

Photo: Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

In a way, Julia Hahn is the Patty Hearst of the far right, a daughter of privilege who veered wildly off the expected course. While she has said almost nothing about her journey to the virulent corners of white nationalism, and has not granted any interviews since starting in the White House (she turned down a request from The Intercept), the puzzle of her journey to the alt right can be assembled.

Hahn comes from fabulous wealth. Her grandfather Harold Honickman presided over a soft-drink bottling company that became one of the largest in the nation; in 2002, his net worth was estimated at $850 million. Honickman has used his wealth to support liberal causes, including organizations that help the homeless and efforts to tighten gun control. His family foundation has even provided funding for a poetry prize, and his wife wrote a genteel letter on the foundation website that said, “Our personal belief, at the end of the day, is that we are here to take care of one another.”

One of the Honickman children, Shirley, is the mother of Hahn, who was born on April Fools’ Day in 1991. Hahn was raised in a house that’s not far from Rodeo Drive and is valued at more than $5 million by Zillow. (Hahn’s White House financial disclosure form shows she owns bank and stock funds worth as much as $2 million.) The private school she attended (as I did, a generation earlier) is Harvard-Westlake. It’s hard to imagine a class of people who benefit more from immigrant and undocumented workers — who clean their homes, mow their lawns, maintain their pools, and cook their meals — than Hahn and other children of privilege in Los Angeles. The comfortable life she enjoyed was due, in no small part, to the immigrants she demeaned as a writer for Breitbart.

The dissonance appears to widen when you look at her secondary education. Harvard-Westlake is a model of West Coast liberalism. It is generally regarded as the most competitive school in Los Angeles, its student body drawing on the city’s entertainment and business worlds. When Hahn was named to the White House, the flummoxed student newspaper at Harvard-Westlake published a story in which her history teacher wondered aloud, “She was rather soft-spoken as I recall, so I guess no, I didn’t really see her headed to work for an organization like Breitbart or a person like Bannon.”

Steve Bannon walks to a House Republican meeting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on March 23, 2017.

Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News/Getty Images

Paradoxically, a clue to Hahn’s radicalization is located at Harvard-Westlake. The school has a surplus of famous alumni, from Shirley Temple to Sally Ride, Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Matthew Weiner (the creator of “Mad Men” who named one of his show’s characters for a popular teacher at Harvard). But the school has another alum who is more infamous than famous: Alex Marlow, the editor-in-chief of Breitbart.

Marlow graduated from Harvard-Westlake in 2004, before Hahn, and for a long time nobody at the school seemed to know or care where he had ended up. The school took notice in 2016, when Marlow was quoted in a New York Times profile of Bannon. A school official posted the story on Facebook. Parents and alumni of Harvard-Westlake were aghast. “This is an embarrassment to our school, and to our fantastic community,” read one of the comments on the post.

The controversy was duly reported by the school’s student newspaper, which published a story on Marlow and quoted some of his teachers who remembered him as a smart and polite student — just like Hahn. “I would never have imagined that he would get involved with an organization as deplorable as Breitbart News,” said his history teacher Dave Waterhouse.

The upshot is that a single school in Los Angeles was the breeding ground for two of the youngest and most vehement stars of the Trump movement. This raises the prospect of what is known, among experts who study extremism, as a cluster. It goes beyond Hahn and Marlow.

Andrew Breitbart at the Occupy L.A. site, where he was interviewing occupiers in 2011.

Photo: Ted Soqui/Corbis/Getty Images

Where do America’s far-right leaders come from? Hahn and Marlow, who grew up 5 miles apart, are clues to an intriguing fact of political epidemiology. A surprising number of alt-right leaders come from a single wealthy liberal enclave: the west side of Los Angeles.

Andrew Breitbart, who founded the site that bears his name, was raised in Brentwood, at the center of the west side, and was living there when he died in 2012. Bannon, before becoming famous as the chairman of Breitbart and then Trump’s ideologue, was a Hollywood producer who sent his daughters to a private school in Brentwood. Stephen Miller, the 31-year-old presidential adviser who has been wildly provocative on immigration issues, was raised in neighboring Santa Monica, also known as the People’s Republic of Santa Monica because of its liberal politics.

This might seem weird. California voted in a landslide for Hillary Clinton. All of the state’s elected officials are Democrats, from the governor on down. Since 1961, only one Republican has been elected mayor of Los Angeles. But look again. While Trump got far fewer votes than Clinton, California’s population is so large that the only other state where Trump got more votes was Texas (which he won). According to a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, California has more far-right conspiratorial “Patriot” groups, 81, than any other state in the country (Texas, the runner-up, has 79). California may be the “Left Coast,” but it is also the beating heart of the far-right coast.

This is not an accident. People don’t like to be told what to think, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that an atmosphere of doctrinaire liberalism might produce reactionaries who delight in defying the dogmas that seemed so repressive when they were growing up. For instance, Miller, a key advocate of Trump’s Muslim travel ban, chafed at the multiculturalism of his high school and its tolerance of gays.

Social progress always seems to trigger a backlash. It’s a paradox that makes sense — environments that are constructed to stop extremism can, instead, provoke it. Trump’s whole rise cannot be viewed through this single lens, of course. But the dynamic is crucial to understanding how and where some extremists are born: when people feel the privileges of their race, gender, language, or religion are threatened.

The skyline of Washington, D.C., including the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, U.S. Capitol, and National Mall, seen from the air at sunset in 2014.

Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

In the popular telling, a common scenario of Muslim extremism occurs when a susceptible mind falls under the spell of a charismatic leader at a mosque or madrassa, though sometimes the contact occurs online (this happened with followers of Anwar al-Awlaki, for instance). I have reported on this dynamic in Pakistan, Iraq, and other countries that were like emotional depots for the unformed zeal of drifting youths. The spiritual leaders were spellbinding, their warnings were often apocalyptic, and the devotion of their youthful followers was complete, even if the logic of their maximalist ideologies was flawed and inhuman. Young minds, unshaped, were tinder for an ideological spark.

This scenario isn’t true only for Islamic extremists. When Hahn arrived in Washington, D.C., as another just-out-of-college aspirant, she was not political, according to every account of her that I’ve read and heard (I talked with more than a half dozen people who knew her at the University of Chicago). According to the Washington Post, Hahn jolted to ideological life in the first job she landed — as a producer for right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham. “It sparked her evolution,” the Post stated. “She moved quickly to the right.” A short article in the New Yorker reported much the same, that an apolitical Hahn moved to Washington to get a media job and turned to the far right after she started working for Ingraham. The Post quoted a former Ingraham employee as saying, “Laura will do that to people. She can be very convincing.”

This evokes a strange parallel between far-right radio and television empires presided over by the likes of Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Alex Jones, and Steve Bannon, and fundamentalist mosques and madrassas that manufacture the extremists of the Islamic world. Radical ideologies presented to impressionable minds in these locations are totalistic and comforting in an unsteady world. They offer simplistic antagonists — such as the infidels and the immigrants — and provide simplistic answers to social or economic problems (shut down immigration, eliminate education for girls, and so on). These spellbinding leaders, and the infrastructures around them, are vectors of youthful extremism.

Hahn worked for Ingraham for about a year, then became a spokesperson for David Brat, an insurgent Republican who used the issue of immigration to defeat House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Brat, a total outsider, raised just $200,000 for his challenge to Cantor, and part of his upset victory was due to strong support from Ingraham as well as other right-wing media figures, including Mark Levin and Ann Coulter. Whether by design or chance, Hahn was at the center of the alt-right rebellion against not just the Democratic Party but the Republican establishment, too.

The late founder of Breitbart News, Andrew Breitbart, is seen on a T-shirt at the 44th Annual Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., on Feb. 23, 2017.

Photo: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Redux

Her next step took her to the forefront — as one of the most prolific and strident reporters for the norm-pulverizing machine at Breitbart. Bannon was the dominant figure at Breitbart at the time, “prone to surrounding himself with like-minded young acolytes,” as the New York Times later noted. In an unusual look inside Bannon’s life before he joined Trump’s campaign, a Bloomberg reporter visited Bannon’s townhouse-turned-newsroom and wrote that he had a “group of young, female Breitbart News reporters whom he’s dubbed the Valkyries.” The Bloomberg story had a photo of Bannon at his Capitol Hill home with nine young reporters, including Hahn. After Politico published a story that criticized Bannon, Hahn rose to his defense and described him as “one of the most supportive, kind, inspiring and selfless bosses a reporter could ask for.”

Under Bannon, Hahn produced a torrent of articles that mimicked his incendiary ideas on immigration, Muslims, and Democrats. Her stories were perfectly attuned to the extremist ideas for which Bannon has become celebrated and despised; Bannon and Hahn even co-wrote a story that flayed Paul Ryan. One of Hahn’s stories accused Hillary Clinton of planning to resettle a million Muslims in America, and another article warned ominously that under Clinton the number of Muslims in America would exceed the number in Germany — an irrelevant comparison because Germany’s population is several times smaller. One of Hahn’s anti-immigration articles was headlined “Clinton Releases Plan to Dissolve U.S. Border Within 100 Days.”

That was the usual alt-right noise from Breitbart. But in 2015, when Bannon started talking about “The Camp of the Saints,” Hahn wrote about it too. Her story argued that the book was prophetic because it warned that “the liberalism of the West would cause Western nations to throw open their doors to so many migrants that it would spell the doom of liberal society itself.” Hahn’s story used the book to warn that, as she wrote, immigrants from failed countries will “remake the West in the image of those failed countries.” The book, however, is widely regarded as a racist fever dream. One of its most enthusiastic supporters is Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front in France, who has a copy of it in her office and has tweeted out her endorsement of it.

Even in the conservative world, Hahn went too far for the comfort of some people. At the end of 2015, when she asked a panel of Republican legislators to raise their hands to indicate whether they would suspend or reduce Muslim immigration, Rep. Raul Labrador, a conservative from Idaho, lashed out at her. “I don’t answer questions from you,” he told Hahn, “because you are not a truthful reporter.”

Young Republicans holding iPads take a test, offered by the right-wing organization Generation Opportunity, about economic issues that are important to them at the 40th Annual Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md., in 2013.

Photo: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Redux

The handful of published stories about Hahn have tended to focus on a seeming paucity of information that would explain who she is or how she ended up on the far right. “Hahn’s increasingly watched byline was all the more extraordinary for her utter anonymity,” the Washington Post reported. “Not only did she never appear on TV, she had no public social media presence whatsoever. Photos of her were hard to come by — and conspiracy theories about her true identity were beginning to circulate.” This makes for a good mystery story, but it misses the point. It took little effort for The Intercept to find photos of Hahn (there are some on Facebook, and Bloomberg had published a series of photos that included Hahn and listed her by name). While she does not appear to have been on television, Hahn was frequently on Breitbart radio and other right-wing radio shows.

The mysterious thing about Julia Hahn is that there is any mystery at all. Washington is bursting with strivers in their 20s just like her, eager to find their spot on the terrain of political power, while unsure of what their own attitudes about power really are. The lack of a political center in the young creatures of Washington is the stuff of parody; just watch an episode of “Veep.” Long ago, I was one of these creatures — as a student at Georgetown University, I applied for internships on Capitol Hill and took the first one I was offered, from a Republican representative famous for one thing — his father was Barry Goldwater, the iconic senator from Arizona. The son had little of his father’s charisma and his politics were vague, though he was kind to me and let me drive his Aston Martin. He was no Laura Ingraham.

Karachi and Kabul are a long ways from Capitol Hill but the hydraulics of youthful extremism are remarkably similar in all of them. Julia Hahn’s opposites are not the young and impressionable Muslims who adopt hate-filled ideas about infidels. They are her mirror image.

Top photo: Julia Hahn on July 24, 2015, at the Breitbart offices in Washington.

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Many “limousine liberals” from privileged, wealthy families are closet racists, sexists, and “classists.” They secretly despise people of color, gays and lesbians, “rednecks,” and homeless people, even working-class people. But they are too polite to tell their racist jokes in public, because it might spoil their “politically-correct,” elitist, noble image. Go to their lily-white country clubs once in awhile and listen to their conversations when they think only their fellow elitists are listening.

Thank you Mr. Maass for an interesting article with insightful analysis and nothing really left unsaid. It did leave me with some thoughts and perhaps questions. One is a matter of definition, perhaps because what is considered a liberal (small ‘l’) in Canada has always been different from what is a liberal in the U.S. It is difficult for me to think of people who live in Beverly Hills and have both money and power that they do not hesitate to wield as ‘liberal’. To my mind, these privileged people might consider themselves to be the standard-setters for the lives of others less fortunate, and also would be people who perhaps have life-styles rather different than those of the people for whom they set the standards. Their liberal-ness might consist in something like a modern sense of noblesse oblige, promoting what they consider to be the desirable social views and even language for lower socio-economic classes. As for the young woman who seems to have ‘escaped’ from the political correctness and social personae of her background, well, she is still very young. I foresee that she may very well find a middle ground that she might occupy with some sense of personal freedom. I hope my comments are fair?

I guess Maass is pretending (for ideological purposes) to be an idiot who can’t do even the most elementary research when he writes, “The book, published in the 1970s, had existed for decades as an obscure cornerstone of the utmost fringes of white racism.”

The reality:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Raspail#Life_and_career
“In his most widely known work, The Camp of the Saints (1973), Raspail predicts the collapse of Western civilization owing to an overwhelming “tidal wave” of Third World immigration. The book has been translated into English, German, Spanish, Italian, Afrikaans, Czech, Dutch, Polish and Portuguese, and as of 2006 it had sold over 500,000 copies.[1] Today the novel is popular among anti-immigration activists and has been reprinted by John Tanton’s The Social Contract Press. After The Camp of the Saints Raspail wrote other successful novels, including North, Sire and The Fisher’s Ring.”

So it was “forgotten” for less than three decades and then it was presumably translated into German, Spanish, Italian, Afrikaans, Czech, Dutch, Polish and Portuguese. Or possibly only the Czech and Polish translations were published in 2000 or thereafter. Also it had sold 500,000 copies as of *eleven* years ago. Even if what you say is technically true, the passage remains misleading since it implies that Bannon is responsible for its recent rediscovery.

The question is how are the alt-right media figures swaying the audience? It is through talk radio. The alt-right spews hatred and fake news to America though talk radio, where as its liberal competition NPR plays classical music and concerto. Guess which radio station the average blue collar people listen to when driving to, from, and at wok. Unless we see more open minded talk radio to compete with the alt-right the country will be lost very soon to the right wingers.

I agree, but even in liberal Eugene in liberal Oregon, there is nothing but right wing radio. Air America was on briefly but was bought out. I have to listen to NPR for talk radio because there is nothing else. Apparently, it’s money. Right wing money buys out, drowns out liberal voices. Even where the populace welcomes them.

Maybe, despite the privilege the article attributes to them, in traditional liberal fashion Hahn and Marlow actually care about the suppression of wages, usurpation of job opportunities ans affirmative action benefits, overcrowded housing, schools and hospitals that massive immigration causes in the lives of Black Americans. More than the writers and readers at Intercept, who seem to care more that they are not viewed as racists or even fascists, no matter how damaging their support for open borders is to the Black community.

The basic explanation given here for the phenomenon “Julia Hahn” or of young followers of ISIS is a profoundly conservative one: the young passive, basically empty vessel filled by a mean ideology. Conservative educational icon Max Rafferty would be most happy with this explanation. You only need to choose the right “indoctrinators”, and you’ll produce well behaved and adjusted young Republicans. The Soviet Union had the mirror model for their preferred “new man”.
Both sides are fearful of young people who dare to think for themselves, who challenge authority, who even might challenge the one correct (Judaeo-Christian, Muslim or Marxist) moral compass.
Opposition to their point of view cannot possibly anything else than “evil” influences (liberal, permissive parents, schools, society/bourgeois CIA-inspired “ideology”).
The explanatory power of such tropes is next to zero.

but was obama who thoughtfully topped up the strategic reserve with an orgy of fracking .. the presidential “armada”, or whatever the hell he calls it, is all gassed up and ready to party with fuel-air bombs

and no worries: the fallout will only be political .. maybe Hahn will graduate from reviewing books to writing them

The article is self-contradictory. It makes a claim that westside of LA is a breeding ground for the far right. It then claims that Hahn was non-ideological and was intoxicated by power and ambition. Which is it?

A laughable article all the way around. She didn’t follow the other lemmings in her privileged upbringing, therefore she must be a brainwashed member of the KKK. This is how people with different views are treated by the “tolerant” left. The author compared her to a terrorist for crying out loud.

In posing the question: “Do you actually believe that the comparison of Hahn to radical Muslim extremists is fair and/or proportionate?”, Mona chose to respond: “As sociological and psychological matters, yes.”

OK Mona, you now claim to be an expert in psychology. So, let’s play your game for a bit. Are you claiming that Hahn can be legitimately likened to Patty Hearst who was kidnapped by the SLA, locked in a closet for weeks, and terrorized to the point at which she began to involuntarily identify with her captors as a survival mechanism? Can you even provide a single instance where Hahn has been forcibly compelled by anyone on the political right, at any time, to say or do anything with which she did not agree?

If not, then the comparison boils down to the two acting in a manner that their upbringing would not suggest to the uninformed mind. Yet, even this comparison falls flat on its face as the author has provided a plausible sequence of voluntary actions that allegedly fueled Hahn’s political evolution from the moderate left to the “extreme” right. The patent dishonesty of this hit piece does not stop there however, they also likened Hahn’s psychological disposition to that of a violent, radicalize, hate-filled extremist whose utter contempt for those with whom she does not agree is fueled by the express belief that “liberalism of the West would cause Western nations to throw open their doors to so many migrants that it would spell the doom of liberal society itself.” Isn’t this the very heart of the authors’ own hate-filled contempt for Hahn? – That she holds political views different from their own, and those of their intended target audience?

So let’s unpack Hahn’s express belief that “liberalism of the West would cause Western nations to throw open their doors to so many migrants that it would spell the doom of liberal society itself.” Is it not true that:

1. liberal nations of the west (EU specifically) have opened their doors to immigrants and migrants?,

2. the problems arising from the intransigent nature of Muslim immigrant cultures have been the focus of numerous studies dating back for at least three decades?,

3. The problems arising from the intransigent nature of Muslim cultures contained within western host nations have increasingly become the topic of numerous news articles in recent years?,

4. many EU member states have been subjected to deadly terrorist actions that originated from within their respective Muslim communities?,

5. terrorist actions are, by definition, the use of violence or threat of violence in order to affect a political, religious, or ideological change?,

6. the rise of the “alt-right” within many EU’s member states is being attributed to a growing level of frustration attributed to Muslim intransigence and the increase in political violence associated it?,

7. many EU member states are actively limiting the inflow of migrants and asylum seekers?,

8. the EU’s top court was forced to even issue a recent ruling that European Union states do not have to admit people on humanitarian grounds (e.g. Syrian refugees etc)?,

10. the long term effects of immigration-driven multiculturalism have culminated in the rise of nativist and populist right-wing, reactionary political movements across Europe?,

11. the rise of nativist and populist right-wing political movements across Europe are now fueling the further rise of anti-immigration, anti-Euro, and anti-EU attitudes?

12. Numerous liberal scholars are now acknowledging that the rise of nativist and populist right-wing political movements could threaten the very existence of the EU itself?

How, then, are the forgoing changes not a validation of Hahn’s belief that “liberalism of the West would cause Western nations to throw open their doors to so many migrants that it would spell the doom of liberal society itself”?

OK Mona, you now claim to be an expert in psychology. So, let’s play your game for a bit. Are you claiming that Hahn can be legitimately likened to Patty Hearst who was kidnapped by the SLA, locked in a closet for weeks, and terrorized to the point at which she began to involuntarily identify with her captors as a survival mechanism?

Oh Mona, you are so transparent. Is there anyone left who does not see through your endless stream of obviating bullshit? But hey, the fact that you are unable to refute a single element of my post speaks volumes. So please continue…

Now let’s address your current concern absent the inclusion of patently false claims about my falsely alleged views on adoption that is meant to further distract from you utter failure to counter my main thesis..

Here is a black law professor, Carol Swain, declaring that the Black Lives Matter movement is “pure Marxism”:

I suppose that you are now going to claim that professor Swain is a self-hating sellout…

Or maybe you object to the claim that Black Lives Matters is a race-centric, black separatist organization that has encouraged all African-Americans to only do business with “blacks” to the exclusion of all whites. Or that the founder, Aliza Garcia, states unequivocally that “It is appropriate and necessary to have strategy and action centered around Blackness without other non-Black communities of color, or White folks for that matter, needing to find a place and a way to center themselves within it.”

In regard to its utter lack of BLM’s moral integrity, recent history speaks for itself. For instance, their continued use of the now iconic “Hands up, don’t shoot” meme is meant to further reinforce the false claim that Michael Brown had his hands in the air when he was shot by a Ferguson police officer. Over one hundred blacks lied when they claimed to be eyewitnesses to the shooting of Michael Brown, yet not a single one has been prosecuted for providing false testimony to a grand jury that was seeking a murder charge against the police officer. Neither has BLM’s core organization ever retracted the specious claim. To the contrary, there are numerous documented instances of Black Lives Chapter members openly calling for the death of White police officers, or whites in general. Likewise, the is an overwhelming propensity exhibited by BLM members for reflexively characterizing every shooting of a black by police officers as unwarranted – a claim that has almost always been proven to be false in light of the cold facts. Again, BLM’s poster child is a female black Panther who herself was convicted of the shooting death of a police officer.

And one cannot ignore the strategy employed by BLM chapter members to incite violence at trump rallies with the intention of falsely depicting Trump as a neo-Nazi racist, and his followers as “black shirts” – an effort that has been supported by Intercept writers like Juan Thompson and Robert Mackey. Or, one can cite the numerous violent attacks on whites by BLM members in the immediate wake of Trump’s victory. One just has to do a YouTube search on “BLM rant” to get sense of the racial hatred that BLM nurtures, and the contempt that it provokes. None of this activity has been denounced by BLM’s founding members.

I suppose that you are now going to claim that professor Swain is a self-hating sellout…

I don’t know if she hates herself, but she’s a black woman who has adopted “conservative Christian” positions and teaches at Vanderbilt, so “sellout” is pretty damned likely.

Anyway, referring to BLM as “Marxist” is proof-positive that Professor Swain wouldn’t recognize Marxism if it bit her on the ass and dismissing and demonizing any organization or movement out of hand because of an association to Marxism is beyond boring and dumb.

The 1950s called. They want their copyrighted name-calling script back.

More pontificating from the resident hypocrite who has chosen to live in an insular white community in an economically exclusive peninsula in California. What is the percentage of blacks in your city? .2%? And you presume to support the authors’ condemnation of Hahn simply because she identifies with the a conservative subset of the racially dominant culture in America? really?

Karl, you keep yammering about what you believe to be my current residence as if it somehow defines a long lifetime of racial and class experience and study.

The facts speak for themselves. You live in a Million Dollar Townhouse within an insular community that is racially exclusive. Thus, you do not have to taste the fruits of immigration or multiculturalism of which you are so enamored. You would be spotted immediately as the complete phony that you are in my neck of the woods. So keep on reading those books with the aim of convincing yourself that theory trumps first-hand experience.Can you guess what the average Hispanic, Black or American Indian parent dreams of in my community? – The day that they can afford to move to another one with less crime and better schools. There are twenty-two listed sex offenders within a square mile of the local elementary school; nineteen are Hispanic and three are Black. Crime in the area is among the highest in the state with assault topping the list. Yet the community itself boasts a level of cultural integration second to none; Hispanic, Black, American Indian, and white culture are all amply represented. Heaven on earth…

“Karl, you keep yammering about what you believe to be my current residence as if it somehow defines a long lifetime of racial and class experience and study.”

You have it wrong, racist hatemonger, more wrong than you can imagine. You have no idea what my experience is and, in any case, that’s not the subject here. Someday I may feel like sharing. . . or maybe not.

There are twenty-two listed sex offenders within a square mile of the local elementary school. . .

And I’d bet good money that many of them are “guilty” of “crimes” that suggest or indicate absolutely nothing about their potential danger to children.

Anyway, your neighborhood sounds like an uncomfortable place for a racist to live. Love it or leave it, baby.

This latest post by Doug Salzmann is a perfect example of the way in which faux-liberals respond when confronted with their own hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty.

1. Begin with an insult (preferably one that imparts a false impression of their opposition)
2. Lay claim to an untold, fictional history to refute incontrovertible fact
3. Mitigate the import of known fact by dishonestly minimizing its significance
4. End with another insult that is intended shut down the conversation.

Fucking pathetic. But hey, don’t dismay. Maybe you can once again convince a moderator to suspend my posting privileges for simply speaking the truth, eh jackalope?

Ya don’t say professor, do go on with your linear diatribe. Not much to say about the book huh. What do you consider to be ethical behavior with regard to the more vulnerable members of our society? You don’t have to be smart or rich to have a sense of decency. What’s holding you back?

Oh Mary Jane, how terribly intellectual of you to use the phrase “linear diatribe”; next time it might be best to use it where it actually applies.

Not much to say about the book huh

Nope, the article wasn’t about the book. It was only used to suggest that Ms. Hahn was predisposed to insidious, right wing indoctrination by her liberal education at Harvard-Westlake. In attempting to provide an explanation for Ms. Hahn’s seemingly anomalous break with years of liberal ideological conditioning, the authors make reference to a longstanding, cold war theory that has found new life in a post 911 world: radicalization occurs through human and cluster interaction. As proof that this theory applies to Ms. Hahn, the authors cite the fact that Alex Marlow, the editor-in-chief of Breitbart, was a 2004 graduate of Harvard-Westlake. It does not matter that the two did not attend the school at the same time. Or, that either one showed any sign that they would become “radicalized” in their political views while attending Harvard-Westlake. Rather, the mere coincidence that two Harvard-Westlake graduates would end up working together at Brietbart News is enough for the authors to suggest that common educational experience at Harvard-Westlake must be the originator of their radicalization:

it shouldn’t be a surprise that an atmosphere of doctrinaire liberalism might produce reactionaries who delight in defying the dogmas that seemed so repressive when they were growing up.

The problem with this ad hoc synopsis is that no evidence is presented to even suggest that either Hahn or Marlow believed that Harvard-Westlake was “repressive” in any way. In fact, Hahn went on to get a degree in philosophy upon graduating from Harvard-Westlake. According to Wikipedia, “Hahn’s senior thesis at the University of Chicago was on ‘issues at the intersection of psychoanalysis and post-Foucauldian philosophical inquiry.'” This a rather curious line of inquiry for someone in whom the fires of conservative “radicalization” are simmering. Focault is best known for his affinity for post-structuralist and postmodernist philosophy. Even Chomsky openly rejected Foucault’s extremely liberal, postmodern view that man is not innately possessed of fixed human faculties. In short, it would appear that Hahn followed the road that was laid out before her by “doctrinaire” liberals until that road dropped into the abyss of anti-realism wherein ones fundamental sense of self is solely derived from the consensus reality of those who paved the way, and where existential nihilism reigns supreme.

What do you consider to be ethical behavior with regard to the more vulnerable members of our society?

Such distinctions are nonsensical to those who know that all actions are governed by the law of reciprocity; we reap what we sow. It is in regard to such laws that Hahn is much better positioned to realize the Karmic nature of reality than are the ill-fated adherents of postmodern thought.

You don’t have to be smart or rich to have a sense of decency.

Ghandi once said, “The only tyrant I accept in this world is the ‘still small voice’ within me.”

“Hahn is an outlier among outliers. She was raised in Beverly Hills, attended a private high school, and the only wisp of political activity in her adolescence was a decidedly liberal, pro-immigration gesture: She raised money for a group that brought foreign orphans to the United States.”

She has rebelled against her neo-liberal upbringing for even more money.

Isn’t it a bit sexist to portray this woman as a rebellious teenager and weak-minded victim of circumstance who is incapable of critical thinking?

Is it not possible that this bright, curious and open-minded young lady proceeded on her own journey of intellectual discovery? A journey which ultimately led her to conclude that the leftist ideology that she had been exposed to for most of her life was complete bullshit?

As I read the article, the author concluded her political views are based on those of her employers. One of the reasons there are so many right wingers in the media is that there is so much right wing money in the media. Money does talk.

So this dude grows up in the same neighborhood as this lady, goes to the same high school, yet HER political views are somehow a reflection of some sort of warped privilege, and his AREN’T. This notion has “Journalism” written all over it, and it’s why fewer and fewer people care about the conventional news media anymore.

He says: ” There has been a lot of discussion about countering extremism and identifying extremists before they do something that harms themselves or the nation. How do young people become radicalized? ”

Oh, he’s talking about the people who threw bricks through windows or attacked people at Berkeley and Middlebury College, right? Of course he isn’t. He’s a shill.

No such “conflation” occurs in the above article. You appear to be unaware of the psychology and sociology of indoctrination into extremist, exclusivist, other-izing worldviews. The processes are similar, sometimes identical, across the board.

The madrassas are a propaganda and brain washing instrument used by Salafists to spread their far right ethno-religious beliefs. Breitbart news is a far right ethno-religious instrument used to spread the same type of beliefs, but with a different flavor.

When the history of the first quarter of the 21st century is written, it will show an obvious attempt by far right wing groups across the world to push their respective agendas in their theaters of operation by instigating hate and violence against the normal people of other groups, and feeding off the response from those attacks.

Examples: Salafists attack America, in turn strengthening American right wing groups, who in turn push for war against nations in the Muslim world, which in turn strengthens the far right wing in those countries, who launch more attacks, thus further strengthening the right wing groups and ideologies in the U.S.

It’s a sick symbiotic relationship between the various groups who claim to be blood enemies of each other, yet who could not survive and thrive without the other.

The ONLY way to stop this madness is for us to cut out the tumors within our own body politic.

We can launch drone strikes across the world for the rest of time and only outcome to that would be our own continued march towards right wing totalitarianism.

Fight the enemy within, who waves the flag, thumps the bible and spews hatred, or lay down and die. As it stands, there are no other options.

Now I know where and how Anns, Tomis, Lauras, and now Julias come from and, are made famous. Out of nowhere and free publicly for their controversial nonsense. It’s too bad our human nature can’t help but keep watching and looking at the moral train wrecks. But hear me out:

I was having trouble getting past the mad men and women who ruined my career, and after I was gone, proceeded to lose all the business, customers, gifted people and future potential our team had fostered.

I went to talk about it with an old priest I had come to deeply respect. He sat their his shoulders to hand shaking with Parkinson’s listening me. He pointed out that people know what not good for them. They can overcome doing whatever it is for a while (in my case bitterly hating people, and becoming a bitter person in the process, which was so against my nature it was killing me, literally). He said we can avoid doing it, even not paying attention to the devils that are constantly trying to remind us. What we have the most trouble with is avoiding the near occasions of our sin; like moth to flame. We think we can fly closer and closer, until…
I believe the media airing these human garbage mouths, and us watching and listening is like that, our inability to near occasions of sin. Watching them leaves most of us bitter, argumentative and on our defensive haunches. It encourages their ilk, and makes them more valuable to advertisers.
It is better to turn the page, change the channel, open a new windows and close that one, than to linger. These people deserve that – none of our time.

While I have no personal interest in the white culture argument, I find it strange that Americans who prefer a white majority are automatically suspect. Is there any culture in world history that has voluntarily surrendered it’s dominance to another? Most European countries, with Canada coming on board, are reacting in similar fashion.

what is “white culture”. am i supposed to like taylor swift, justin bieber and country music? do i need the latest smartphone? should i vote a certain way? i’ve lived all my life in this country and i am not acquainted with this.

That’s rather funny – after all what is ‘white’ in America? From an indigenous point of view, you area a hodge-podge of different invaders from across the Atlantic – Ireland, England, Scotland, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Italy, Greece, Russia…among any others. Most speak different languages from one another, different cultures, and represent quite different versions of Christianity (Calvinist, Arminian, Catholic, Orthodox) – and then you all went crazy when you invaded Turtle Island and invented some shiny new ones (Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, Pentecostal).

“Whites” – the amalgamation of numerous different Europeans – have been a majority here for only a short time, after Natives died from foreign plagues, murder and forced removals. Similar story in Canada.

So what is this ‘white culture’ of Turtle Island – er, North America – all about? As pretzel attack says, Taylor Swift? A love of bland food, an obsession with wealth and shallow pop culture?

Extremists are simply those that lie at either end of the spectrum of positions held in the society examined, and for the time being the article is accurate. Within the old country of Nazi Germany, for instance, these people would not be extremists, and perhaps if the not to distant future these position will become standard republican party platforms.

You’ll have to support that last argument a little better. Canada is welcoming more refugees than it ever has, and Europe, with a few notable exceptions, is the primary area for refugee care and settlement. France just resoundingly defeated the candidate whose primary platform was a desire for the cultural monopoly you seem to think is inherent to the human condition. Other than Brexit, there’s not a lot of evidence for the latter argument, other than the fact that sometimes taking care of refugees is hard.

As for a culture that has voluntarily surrendered its “dominance” to another? Well, that was sort of the reason the Civil War was fought, wasn’t it? The voluntary ending of enforced dominance of one group of people over another? Was it a struggle? Of course. Was it to the detriment of our nation? Considering that one can pretty much point to Reconstruction as the beginning of our country’s prominence, and that near 100% of our cultural output is from people who were considered “foreign” or “other” to America in earlier parts of our history… no. Just no.

Dear lord, this is some weak copy-paste analysis, while also serving as an excellent exampel

Take the following:

“It’s hard to imagine a class of people who benefit more from immigrant and undocumented workers — who clean their homes, mow their lawns, maintain their pools, and cook their meals — than Hahn and other children of privilege in Los Angeles. The comfortable life she enjoyed was due, in no small part, to the immigrants she demeaned as a writer for Breitbart.”

and combine with this:

“But the dynamic is crucial to understanding how and where some extremists are born: when people feel the privileges of their race, gender, language, or religion are threatened.”

Which way is it?

Personally, I’d guess the inverted noblesse obligue of modern elites ( examle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWJSKhEwjy8 ) was the actual spark of her conversion. She felt something was off and started venturing outside the ideological reservation.

This also shows some cluelessness

“This scenario isn’t true only for Islamic extremists. When Hahn arrived in Washington, D.C., as another just-out-of-college aspirant, she was not political, according to every account of her that I’ve read and heard (I talked with more than a half dozen people who knew her at the University of Chicago). According to the Washington Post, Hahn jolted to ideological life in the first job she landed — as a producer for right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham. “It sparked her evolution,” the Post stated. “She moved quickly to the right.” A short article in the New Yorker reported much the same, that an apolitical Hahn moved to Washington to get a media job and turned to the far right after she started working for Ingraham.”

So she was timid at her liberal school but got outspoken once she landed a job and moved out of town. Intellectually curious people who happen upon hate-facts call that “hiding your power-level”. The conversion most likeley came before her first job

1. This story denies agency to Hahn and portrays her as a passive victim of circumstances lacking agency, it is a smear piece. Could it be she found right wing arguments more cogent? We will never know as she is not present in the article to tell her own story. All we are presented is literally speculative strawmen and pathologizing motives, classic hit piece tactics.

2. It seems the author wants immigrants here to clean up after him and pick his fruit. as though those native born citizens who go to tony private schools are too good for manual labor, that is both racist and classcist.

Thank you for this wonderful article. I do think it’s good journalism because it’s factual original and thoughtful, but mostly because it sparked so many equally thoughtful comments. It was a great pleasure to read through all those comments without being annoyed by trolls.

For me, the social issue is the most interesting. The idea that young people, no matter how well educated by peers and parents, revolt and fling themselves into causes and ideologies diametrically opposed to what would seem to be their nature is fascinating. You were right to bring up Patty Hearst. She fascinated the nation for several years as we all pondered how she could be an icon of revolution and the heiress to a great fortune. Personally, I went through a similar process in my youth starting from a New Deal-inspired liberal progressive working class background and then swinging through extreme right Nazism then to Trotskyite Communism and on to Progressive Socialism before finally settling in to Kropotkinite social anarchism in my 50″s.

On my second pass through your article, I found the photo of Ms. Hahn. She appears to me to have a long way to go. I don’t think she will stay forever with these new alt-right doctrines.

It also appears to me that Mr. Bannon is trying to build his movement on the “Valkyries”. I hope this is true because they will eventually turn away from the movement and that may spell the end of it. One can only hope.

And where might I ask did u come across this stone throwing culture? Love to see your tally of visiting the “global muslim country” that encompasses the vast cultural diversity that exists in the 56 muslim majority countries of this world.

Hardly surprising really, more than one young person has fallen in with the wrong crowd. My question is: does she actually believe what she wrote in her “enthusiastic” review of this book or was she just being outrageous to stoke up her audience? I mean, if trump can say outrageous, offensive and obvious untrue things in order to become president why are you surprised when she adopts the same strategy. On the other hand, if she actually believes it then that’s a different case.

Back in the day the ‘wrong crowd’ were dope smoking anti-war, (the ‘Nam) liberal, mostly, college students. These days the wrong types seem a bit more extreme and radical and are ensconced within government, something the radicals of yesteryear could never accomplish. As capitalism becomes less tenable due to shrinking resources a slide toward the extreme right is inevitable unless there is a viable alternative toward the left. Right now the left has no vision or plan to pull away from this slide and establishment business as usual politics won’t cut it and we’ll be left in the hands of tyrants.

“According to a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, California has more far-right conspiratorial “Patriot” groups, 81, than any other state in the country.”

Meaning what? California has the largest population of any state, more than 39 million people. Let’s be insanely generous for a moment and say that every one of California’s alleged “patriot groups” has 100 members for a total of 8,100. That works out to .02%, or two one-hundredths percent of the population.

Did I mention the “insanely generous” part of the estimate?

According to the National Lightning Safety Institute, the odds of your house being struck by lightning is .5% and of you being struck directly is .3%.

This is the same Southern Poverty Law Center that claims that the largest category of “hate group” in the land is Black and/or Muslim.

The company counted 201 Black and Black Muslim groups for 2016, which far outnumbers its 130 alleged Klan groups outright, and all of its alleged neo-Nazi, racist skinhead and white nationalist groups by two-to-one, respectively.

The SPLC claims that the number of number of “hate groups” nationwide grew by 133 between 2014 and 2016. By its own accounting, 80 of those groups, or nearly two-thirds of the increase, came from Black “hate groups.”

The SPLC also claims that its 101 anti-Muslim “hate groups” pose an existential threat, but nobody in the media seems to believe that the SPLC’s 89 Muslim “hate groups” are even newsworthy. That’s nearly a one-to-one ratio and yet no one is reporting on it.

Oh that’s right, detesting the hordes that are now overrunning Europe is absolutely “racism”. “Racism, racism, racism.” It’s everywhere you see privileged white people, eh Peter? It couldn’t *possibly* have anything to do with the fact that these Third World immigrants are largely peasants and barbarians, could it? Bringing, among other charming traits, their religiously intolerant and misogynistic views to our shores? I mean, do you truly believe these people are on a par with the European writers, doctors and scientists that we used covet as immigrants? If so, please get your head examined.

Sounds you had the right stuff once upon a time, Peter. Privilege, wealth, private schools in sunny Californian and working for the Goldwaters has all the makings for a Cabinet level position in Trump Administration.
If not for a quirk of fate (and working for The Intercept on your CV), you too could be working with Bannon to make Trump great again.

I’ve always thought success the most difficult of adversities to overcome. Look what happened to Trump. *my first school in the heart of Appalachia had a pot-belly stove and a 2-seater out house … just lucky, I guess.

Having a moral compass is NOT a ‘quirk of fate’. People like Hahn, or Trump, or Bannon must have a trifecta of attributes to reach the positions they have attained:

1) A likely unearned privilege that both supports them while they move through their lives and also stokes their ego-driven fear that they are not ‘special’.
2) Intelligence, or at the very least a high-level of cunning and charisma, which propls the success of their endeavors.
3) A complete lack of empathy for others. No moral compass.

Julia Hahn is no radical. It is only communists – mostly those who hide behind “equality” – who regard Julia as a radical.

I would like to point out that it is communists who constantly bring up race. There is racism lurking in every shadow.

What about immigration?

Equality within nations (communism), and equality between nations (globalism, immigration)

Part of this whole equality game is that nations should be equal too. If the West got ahead by cheating, then flooding her with millions of third world immigrants will help level the playing field. So much the better if this policy drags the West down into the dirt in revenge for historical wrongs.

You don’t like that? Then you are a radical.

What about Muslims?

Muslims are commanded to imitate Mohammad. Mohammad was a Jihadist in his last decade of life. This is how be became successful. He married his first cousin. He married a young child.

Mohammad died by poisoning. Why did he not know before he put the meat into his mouth? Why did someone want to poison him? Perhaps because he had just wiped out her family.

If you don’t want people who imitate Mohammad in your society, then you are a radical.

Terrorists usually have a history of petty crime or were married at a young age with a child – these factors make them more susceptible to radicalization. But there is nothing similar here. I suspect there is more to the story. Maybe like Trump she was frightened for her empire and saw the wolves circling (e.g. cousins competing for the inheritance) and so joined forces with these extremists in the hopes that they would protect her.

All I see here is yet another droning opinion piece of trash; nothing more than the same old tired, worn-out, unsubstantiated and unwarranted (yawn), yet all too familiar barrage of attacks, insults & character assassinations. Don’t you know Americans are sick of hearing your bias, and painfully obvious groupthink collectivist diatribes!? Keep it up, your losing millennials by the second.

While we are speculating about motive, maybe, for all her privilege, Hahn actually cares about the plight of the underclass in America and believes that flooding the labor market with cheap immigrant workers undermines American workers’, especially Black Americans’ job prospects. And being perceived as “fascist” as a result bothers her less, in the pursuit of policy that does not push low-wage workers farther into distress, than it does the average Social Justice Warrior.

Don’t know, don’t care. I suppose it is a fun little game for the Bratbarts. Let’s just focus on finding some candidates who can speak in words other than ISIL, terrorist, and national interest, will not kneel before Israel and Saudi Arabia and is willing to tax the hell out of the rich!!

Why? ISIS & terrorists are the biggest threat we face today, ignoring it is exactly why they’re a bigger threat today, than they would have been if Democrats had pulled their heads from Obama’s ass.

I hope Countries still run by Democrats, realize fast before it’s too late, that “being nice”, “catering to”, and “ignoring the threat” of Islamic fundamentalist, and their terrorists, doesn’t work.

They open their doors to them, and instead of the millions being appreciative, trying to assimilate, and embrace better lives in the West, they’ve created no-go enclaves, relocated their failed cultural habits that tore their own countries apart, to their new host countries.
Immediately we seem spikes in WHITE women being singled out for rape by non-Whites, to such levels that white women have begun dying their hair to try appearing more like the women among the immigrants, who aren’t targeted as often.

It’s not Nazi’ist to repeat the words that have come from many of the immigrants own mouths. My dad is mestizo Mexican, he immigrated to the USA legally. So despite my own heritage, I have no shame in repeating threats I’ve heard radical left wing Hispanic immigrants say: “we’re making babies like rabbits for a reason, not just cuz we like to f***, but because we’re creating an ARMY. We’re coming, we’re taking Aztlan (Southwest U.S.), our promised land”..

I’m not MiddleEastern, nor Muslim, so I definitely have no problem in telling naive people that sexual jihad is part of what Muslims do.

Spain, Portugal, Sicily, southern Italy, and every? other area in Europe, situated on the Mediterranean coast, all have dark skin, dark hair, and dark eyed Europeans as their majority. It’s politically correctly called “the Mediterranean look”.
Beginning in the 8th century AD, those areas were still populated by fair skin inhabitants, who descended from the same Visigoth migrations as Germans & Nordics, and they looked like them.

That’s when Islam invaded Jerusalem, stealing it, and the rest of the middle East, then it took over, and converted North Africa. From Africa, their Moors & Berbers, the black & bronze skin African Muslim population, launched an invasion force across the sea into Southwestern Europe, taking over Spain for over 8 centuries.

That’s why today, Spain has so many ppl s with dark skin, hair, n eyes. It’s why they look like Sicilians, southern Italians, Greeks, and Portuguese ppl, instead of their northern European neighbors. Where those in the northern part were safe from the thousand-years of slave & rape raids from Moors & Berbers, those on the Mediterranean coast, all suffered the attacks, and today the genetic result is clear as day.

That’s precisely why they’re starting the same kind of attacks again, this time in the North. They believe it’s their religious right to rape non Muslim women, even little boys are taught this, in the fundamental Muslim homes.
It tells them so, in the Koran. Muhammad answered his warriors when they asked him about their conflicted feelings, regarding rape of their female victims who’s husbands, and sons were injured or killed in the invading raid.
Muhammad answered them, stating that Allah permits rape of their captured female victims, even if their husbands haven’t died from their wounds yet, because it affirms the “supremacy & dominance” of Islam over non-Muslims. Then Muhammad told them Allah permits rape,”ONLY IF The Muslim rapist *finishes inside* their rape victims'”, because it can then result in the birth of “another Muslim”.

What he did & said, is to fundamental Muslims, is LAW, even over their host country’s Own law.
Despite laws against rape, and Pedophiles, fundamental Muslims believe it’s okay because Muhammad permitted it, and did it himself..

It’s why the 5 that year old white girl in Idaho, was sexually assaulted by a gang of young Muslim boys from multiple refugee families..

The problem of letting in/dumping/importing millions of immigrants at the same time, is they tend to create enclaves instead of assimilating.

The resulting Clash of cultures, and the violence that it’s caused, doesn’t just hurt the ppl of the host country, it also hurts other Hispanic & Islamic immigrants, who came here long ago, by themselves, and assimilated.

Today, even tho they’ve been here longer than the new Hispanic & Islamic immigrants, the newcomers’ have the mob, and the first ppl who suffer, before anyone else, is members of their own community, who came long ago, and assimilated. They’re attacked by hardcore fundamentalists, Muslim-Anericans as “traitors to Islam”, and assimilated Mexican Americans as “acting white”.

In Australia, assimilated Muslims are being beaten, and sometimes even killed by the new Muslims, fundamentalists who created Sharia Gangs..

So this policy sees assimilated Muslims & Hispanics, who came legally, on their own, long ago, getting hit by both sides now, thanks to dumbass policies of the Left…

The new Muslims are filled with fundamentalists, attacking assimilated Muslims who’ve been here a long time already.. They attack them for assimilating, calling them “traitors to Islam”.

Then those same Muslim immigrants who were attacked for assimilating, by new, fundamentalist Muslim mobs, are 99% of the time, the unfortunate victims of revenge attacks by non-Muslim mobs who’ve come out looking for the Muslim mobs that assaulted their loved ones..

The guilty are always off hiding somewhere, leaving the innocent of their kind, to suffer the backlash of their bullshit.

Soon the KKK, and similar groups, who’s numbers plummeted over the last 40 years, will be in full force again.

While the MSM will repeatedly air stories about a non-white person getting beat up by someone who’s even 1/4th white, even if that non-white person was a bad guy too, the media will all but ignore stories of non-whites assaulting white ppl, even if the white victim was an innocent kid.

Just because the MSM hides those stories, doesn’t mean they go unreported. Ppl have begin using social media to report today m those incidents, and the fear & anger has begun rising. Thats all groups like The KKK, need to grow their numbers again..

I said this 5 years ago, and unfortunately I was right..

The best thing that could happen to this country, is the left wing parties get voted into extinction.

Anyone who has been paying attention knows the most active organized group of terrorists in USA, as measured in US homicides, is law enforcement. (Collectively less formal gangs are worse but they are not as organized.) The world’s most active organized group of terrorists, based on body count, is the US military. ISIS and al Qaida are organizations created by the US military, they act as agents of it.

The US war is far deadlier than Muslim extremists but remember USA caused millions of deaths in support of al Qaida and ISIS which did not exist until USA incited and waged wars in the Muslim world. US wars are a marathon too far, criticism of those who support them is fair game.

While she has said almost nothing about her journey to the virulent corners of white nationalism…

VIRULENT corners of WHITE NATIONALISM? Really? Okay, let’s walk a bit along this forked road and see where it leads. To start, let’s identify the metric by which MS Hahn’s character is is being measured as the author has clearly failed to do so as a pretext to her public tongue-lashing:

1. She identifies with traditional American culture which is predominantly white.

2. She openly opposes a longstanding multicultural agenda that purported seeks to achieve economic, cultural, and racial parity between the east and west by means of unlimited immigration. Said agenda has been more recently identified by George Soros as the method by which traditional values of EU’s member states could be systematically undermined in preparation for a new global order (of the elites making of course). Thus her claim that “immigrants from failed countries will ‘remake the West in the image of those failed countries'” is not exclusively held by America’s “white Nationalists”, but actually heralded as the very means by which the cultural dissolution of Western nations could be affected. Truth be told, immigration has long been seen by global-mined elitists as a panacea to the most virulent aspects of traditional religious, racial, and cultural underpinnings of western national identities… social cohesion and continuity.

3. She wrote an article about a forty-year old book whose fiction-based prognostications concerning the role of forced immigration closely align with the reality espoused by its most ardent proponents; yes, I said “forced”. Creating conditions within Muslim countries (radicalization of Muslim populations) that ostensibly warrants preemptive military intervention by western powers predictably results in migratory patterns deemed advantageous to transnational corporations who are always seeking to exploit successive waves of unskilled, cheap labor.

4. Hahn is identified as being aligned with the alt-right. Yet, the the term “alt-right” lacks clear definition. If “alt-right” is defined as “a loose group of people with right-wing to far-right ideologies who reject mainstream conservatism, principally in the United States, but also to a lesser degree in Europe” then the definition is general enough to describe tens of millions of Americans alone including Hahn. However, propagandist organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center more narrowly define the alt-right as: “a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that “white identity” is under attack by multicultural forces using “political correctness” and “social justice” to undermine white people and “their” civilization. ” It is by means of such conflation that every traditional, white conservative can be the target of whole cloth condemnations, along with their institutions. Hahn is cynically identified by Mr Maass as (1) white, (2 ) a Nationalist, (3) a non-traditional conservative (4) and as having read the same book as Marine Le Pen and Steve Bannon – ergo she is an opportunistic target for comparison to radical Muslim extremists whose method of affecting political change is self-defined as a violent spiritual struggle (lesser jihad) against those whose own values or beliefs pose a perceived existential threat to the basic tenants of Islam – which itself has proven to be violently evangelical, and transnational in nature.

Now Mr Maass, what was that you were saying about irrelevant comparisons and dishonest (ideologically driven) reporting?

Guilty as charged. Leave up to Doug to snidely focus on spelling errors at the expense of the arguments being made. I guess that I am the only person posting on the Intercept website who has ever made a spelling error.

Hey Doug, while I have you here… maybe you can explain to the rest of us why you are opposed to America’s “white nationalist” institutions when you are so obviously the beneficiary of their fruits? How can you be so self-righteousness while residing in a million dollar Townhouse in an all white community on an exclusive California peninsula?

Do you actually believe that the comparison of Hahn to radical Muslim extremists is fair and/or proportionate?

As sociological and psychological matters, yes. The processes are similar. There can be different factors as well, e.g., many radical Muslims are impoverished, but not all. The 9/11 hijackers were generally well-to-do.

Conversion to isms and ologies that offer a comprehensive, Othering answers to All Questions has commonalities, regardless of time or place.

As for this:

She identifies with traditional American culture which is predominantly white.

Well, yes, because that white “culture” enslaved the black people (then segregated and oppressed them) and ethnically cleansed the natives. That culture also excluded my Irish-Catholic forebears and didn’t consider these filthy papists to be white until approximately after WWII. (I’m so delighted that the Klan now would let me join!) Great folk, those WASPs.

Hahn sure knows how to pick some great traditions with which to identify. But then you feel similarly, as your racist screeds about Black Lives Matter have clearly established.

1. African “blacks” were enslaving their fellow “blacks” centuries before Iberian traders of Moorish descent started exporting them across the Atlantic. In fact, African blacks were the supply side of transatlantic slavery. So, by your logic, any association with an African blacks – no matter how far removed – makes one guilty of slavery by association. Nice bit of logic there.

As for the rest of you contradictory conversion quackery – no response is required.

Soros funded Black Lives Matters is a neo-marxist, Black Separatist, organization. Its founders use a cop killer as a symbol of their liberation. Members from numerous chapters have been caught on camera advocating for deadly violence against ALL whites. Even former black panthers have openly denounced their ideology and methods. Yes, Black Lives Matters is the very embodiment of the moral vacuum that has emerged in far left black culture. But hey, they is yaw type of folks because…

Black African slave trade was “wholly irrelevant to chattel slavery in the United States”?

How can you claim this and expect to be taken seriously. As much as postmodern revisionists like yourself hate to admit that black Africans slavers and their ideological forebears, Islamic slavers, practiced chattel slavery for nearly a thousand years before America was even founded, the fact remains unchallenged by legitimate scholarship. AGAIN, black African slavers formed the supply side of transatlantic slavery.

If one accepts your despicable thesis that Hahn’s identification with America’s dominant political culture makes her a racist simply because a small percentage of early European-Americans engaged in the legacy institution of chattel slavery, then her association with any African blacks must demand equal or greater condemnation.

Again:

Soros funded Black Lives Matters is a neo-marxist, Black Separatist, organization…Yes, Black Lives Matters is the very embodiment of the moral vacuum that has emerged in far left black culture

“Said agenda has been more recently identified by George Soros as the method by which traditional values of EU’s member states could be systematically undermined in preparation for a new global order (of the elites making of course).”

Are you familiar with the Open Society lecture series by George Soros? You can find it on line; educate yourself. While you are at it, check out the sixty minutes interview wherein George Soros acknowledges the unconscionable mean by which he conducts business – to the conscious detriment of tens of millions of poor people around the globe – especially peoples of “color.” Then ask yourself why he funds violence prone, extremist organizations through a maze of foundations and NGOs to affect political chaos in the US and across Europe. Of course, it is far easier to just label a point of view with a single term and pretend that that strategy is possessed of the capacity to do something more than reveal your own ignorance.

How do you think the US government will respond to the growing threat posed by violent leftist groups like Antifa and its violent right opposition? It does not take a giant leap of logic to conclude that violent political dissent will be labeled as domestic terror which, in turn, will provide the pretext for draconian legislation designed to further enhance the elites ability to preemptively neutralize ALL political opposition. Research “operation Gladio” and “Gladio 2.” See how Post WWII, intelligence funded black ops have translated into domestic terror across Europe. And again, explore Saudi Arabia’s role in radicalizing, and then militarizing, Muslim cultures throughout the gulf region to affect violent regime change within their own sphere of influence on behalf US intelligence. See how the Russians and Chinese interpret US funded colored revolutions and then explore how left-leaning foreign NGOs were used to foment political violence. If you conclude that Soros had a hand in funding such efforts, then ask yourself why he would refrain from using like tactics in the US.

So what do you find extreme about her? Keeping in mind that liberal democracy is a historical anomaly, and judging by western countries, a failed system of government.

The article seems to say that diversity represents social progress, yet does not back up this assertion. The history of humanity shows that diversity is a societal disease, to be purged through expulsion or assimilation, if not outright war.

Part of the problem is that authors like this assume western liberal values are advanced, superior, or even legitimate. They are none of the above. Europe, like the rest of the world, needs nationalism, hierarchy, and greater forms of inequality.

The commentary about the alt-right’s financial background is even less important, except in the sense that only certain people in the west embrace nationalism. Ideally, all people should be nationalistic, whether they be poor, middle class, or rich.

Many equalists feel that comparing a white rightist to Islamic extremists is somehow unflattering. Is it? If western society had an element of right wing extremists, it would not be suffering from equality or diversity, and the left would know fear. At this point, it’s something that’s needed. Let’s increase the “incendiary ideas” until they are normalized in society.

I reckon this is an important part of the story. I certainly rebelled against my own socialist-leaning trade union president father when I hit my late teens/early 20s. I didn’t go to the opposite extreme like Ms Hahn has, but I did stop going to marches and rallies and raising money for Cuba and Chile in order to work more shifts at the local supermarket to buy superhero comics !!

Anyway, personal anecdotes aside, folks do tend to rebel against their parent’s views and this is an extreme example of that. If I may be cynical for a moment, I reckon it is likely Ms Hahn will go back to her parents’ liberal values when it comes time to receive an inheritance and/or more money from her parents

That was one of the points he was making! Some young people who have only been exposed to the views of those who had influence in their raising, learn new views out in the real world and rebel against the way they were raised, without realizing it many times. They hear a new ideology never exposed to them and some find it enticing enough to dive in. Whether it be far left, far right or extremism to the fullest degree, young adults trying to find themselves are influenced easily and eager to have their own views. Unfortunately, sometimes those views are very skewed! One of the main points not only about this poor young soul but many on the flip side as well.

Two obvious facts that went unmentioned in this long article: Raspail’s 1973 novel The Camp of the Saints became relevant in 2015 when the Chancellor of Germany decided to admit a million mostly military age male Muslims.

And Ms. Hahn is Jewish and the various Muslim terrorist attacks of 2015 sometimes targeted Jews.

In 2015? You can start with the kosher supermarket in Paris and the bus in Tel Aviv, both in January. Then the Jewish community center in Nice in February. That’s just the beginning of the year, and you can be sure there are lots more.

The immigrant population has a lot less old people and work less while Germans start avoiding to go outside, some out of safety concerns, others because they subconsciously feel less at home in their ancestral home-lands.

The truth is, people tend to adopt the ideology of those they are surrounded by, and those who have power over them. And luckily, most people’s ideology is non-existent or moderate. Most cases of people who were evangelists and lost their faith, or the other way around, are really stories of a changing environment.

The interesting question is why, at some times, those with more extreme ideas start looking like a somewhat more attractive choice among the options that everybody has. After all, most of us aren’t exposed to simply one ideology, but several, and we tend to pick among them whichever feels most attractive. Part of the attraction is because it’s a better fit with our personality and tastes. But if that was all, the number of extremists would remain roughly the same among everyone at all times, and that isn’t what we see. There is another factor, and it’s how well the ideology seems to explain our environment. And it’s at times when the mainstream ideologies seem to be a poor fit with reality, that extreme/crackpot versions may look relatively better. The truth is, both the standard Democratic and Republican lines seem to be off. And the version of reality about the Middle East that is presented in Western countries is nothing short of schizophrenic. That’s why suddenly other options looks attractive to some people.

If I remember right, wasn’t Patty Hearst blindfolded, drugged, and locked in a closet for weeks while the SLA discussed whether or not to kill her? Seems a bit different, doesn’t it?

Also, to use your analogy, it looks like the Stockholm syndrome would have had to take effect before she joined the Laura Ingraham show — i.e., in childhood, Harvard–Westlake, and the University of Chicago.

Interesting story, but it seems like pure speculation to me, especially the bits about “radicalization”.

Like Clinton, it looks more like she made some bad choices which trapped her into this strange position. I’d be more interested in what made her susceptible to making these choices in the first place.

And if I were the Peter Maas, I’d be more circumspect about deploying opinions from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“I’ve written in the past on various occasions about Morris Dees, head of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the bogus “civil rights organization” whose chief (and wildly successful) mission has been to separate wealthy liberals from their money. Last time I checked, the SPLC had more than $150 million in its treasury, more than the GNP of some of the world’s smaller countries, yet it did very little work to advance civil rights or fight poverty.”https://harpers.org/blog/2010/04/morris-dees-a-life-fighting-poverty/

Connecting the dots can be scary. Some people we’d rather not hear the truth. This is what jornalism is supposed to be, and to the commenter who asked “Why are you giving this book light and this repugnant women..”
“Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” that’s why.

This article avoids debating ideas and instead just labels the ideas as “deplorable”, peering into details of the woman’s life to try to trace how she could have been influenced by these ideas (how could someone who seemed like one of us ever start believing the ideas of THOSE people?), and arguing that if we do more of this detailed profiling and influence-tracing it will help enable us to counter the ideas we don’t like. But you never begin to argue on the merits about whether these ideas might be right, nor do you link to anyone who examines these ideas fairly. You say that Laura Ingraham is an example of someone who can be convincing in arguing for these ideas, but you don’t bother to go into why people like her are wrong. So you make the same mistake as people who run systems of repression and systems of indoctrination: you present things as if the goal is to stop people from holding these “deplorable” ideas, without ever opening the door to a fair, thorough and honest examination of the pros and cons.

I don’t agree with Julia Hahn at all, but if anyone who is considering adopting her position looked at an article like yours, it would only make them more willing to agree with her. That’s because you show that you want to discourage these ideas from spreading, without being open to pursuing a fair examination of the issue wherever it might lead. Calling Julia Hahn “a case study in extremism”, as you do in your headline, is inherently distorting language even though it’s kind of traditional language for journalists to use. This kind of language portrays freedom of thought, an individual’s fundamental right to make up their own mind, as if it was something that we need to make an object lesson out of, something that we need to restrain from going into “bad” areas instead of as an important form of autonomy that we need to respect and offer fellowship to. I don’t think it’s a bad thing when some people start to question what they were taught as kids in liberal California or elsewhere, and in fact I respect that questioning spirit. But the kind of respect I have for that is the kind that says “Keep thinking for yourself, but there’s more to be debated here, and your thoughts deserve respect only so far as you are willing to respect facts and the possibility of further reasonable discussion.”

I think I can see some of the influences on your article, but I want to discuss these influences in a different spirit than you described the influences on Julia Hahn. I want to suggest to you that some of these influences are worth evaluating in a more skeptical way. One of these influences, which you acknowledge in your article, is the government programs that try to prevent the spread of ideas labeled “extremist”. Some of these government programs are more secret than others, but by and large these programs are about manipulating people’s thoughts rather than about fair debate. When government or another powerful institution takes that approach, it amounts to repression, and I don’t think we should emulate it.

A second thing I’d mention as a possible influence on your article is the influence-tracing approach of digital technology firms, just because that’s so pervasive nowadays that it’s treated almost as if it was the wisdom of our age. Facebook, and the many other large and small companies that work to trace what will influence the public, are of course manipulative, and often help our political elites try to impose their ideological priorities on the people. But the techniques they use are based on software, which is inherently unable to appreciate the value and meaning of ideas. That reinforces their tendency to track and try to steer the influences on ideas while not being able to engage in reasonable discussion of the ideas’ merits. Since we are humans and not profit-driven algorithms, I think we should resist somewhat our age’s growing tendency to think like algorithms, and make ourselves more open to debate on the merits rather than joining the algorithmic companies in tracking how our fellow humans can be influenced.

A third influence on your article, I think, is those who make a living labeling other ideas as extremist, like the Southern Poverty Law Center which you cite; it’s clear that the SPLC is somewhat arbitrary in what it calls extremist, as is our government, but trying to stigmatize ideas with that kind of label is the opposite of evaluating reasonably whether the ideas are right or not.

A fourth thing that I’d mention as a possible influence is that, in political issues, almost all of us tend to prefer values and ideas that will strengthen alliances with our political coalition partners without paying enough attention to whether these values and ideas are right. You mention in your article that liberalism can be “doctrinaire” sometimes, and it seems to me that part of the reason why liberals are strongly pro-immigration, pro-choice , and pro-environment is because a strong political coalition has been built that requires this combination of views to maintain. For similar reasons, many conservatives are pro-war, pro-life and uninterested in climate change because that combination of views helps their well-established coalition function smoothly. So when liberals take it for granted that more immigration is good, just as your article does, I think one reason why that sounds so obviously right to liberals is because our coalition has led us to think like that. And when one’s beliefs are formed in that way, it makes it harder for you to engage in justifying or debating your beliefs — you just feel these views are obviously right and other views are deplorable. So when you see contrary views, you tend to feel “Yikes, let’s find out how these bad ideas are spreading” instead of being curious and inclined to engage in fair discussion.

Finally, although the best journalism has always helped to contribute to debate and refinement of ideas, there is also an old tendency in journalism to present others’ ideas in a way that discourages further engagement with them. That’s the difference between journalism by and for the open-minded who really want to learn more about the world, and a partisan news outlet. I’m a progressive myself with a culture-related job, and I think this is a deeper problem within progressivism. A large part of progressive ideology and practice gives WAY too much privilege to people like us with culture-related jobs, and we often use that to protect the privilege of our ideas. But at our best we can use our work to open minds, to respect the autonomy of people’s intelligence, to let people know there are important debates and lead people into them. So okay, Julia Hahn absorbed some views which she doesn’t seem to be able to defend in debate. That’s fine, let’s point people to where these issues are discussed further, including the points that we think show she’s wrong. And then the discussion may go on more after that. But it’s important to treat these disagreements as part of one’s respect for freedom of thought. I think in the long run, respect for fair discussion is aligned with humane values.

I realize I’ve been setting very high standards here, but you and the Intercept are worth saying that to, whether you agree with me or not.

The story is about Hahn and her path, and not an exploration of the rationales of right wing extremism, like you so loooong-windedly try to make it. If you want to read articles about that, I’m certain you’ll have no trouble finding them. Sheesh!

So you’re? saying this Jewish woman is a Nazi? I want to be clear, people calling other people Nazis dimishes the horrible history of the Nazis or raises people who are ideologically? different to the level of people who murdered millions thereby allowing you to call for violence against your ideological enemy.

Some people have been observing the body counts the US has accrued since WW II. Some people also understand post WW II US — unlike Nazi Germany — does not have the courage to take major world powers head on. Some people think “Nazi” is too kind a word for many Americans, like this woman, for example. And yes, a Jewish person can be a fascist at the same time.

She speaks for herself in her stated beliefs written about in her articles and with the company she keeps. Her being Jewish hasn’t a damned thing to do with my taking her at her word. I don’t use autopilot to examine the beliefs of Jewish person from having the beliefs that they might have, or for assuming what their being Jewish means or doesn’t mean to them. And speaking of your “I want to be clear” about “horrible history,” currently, and for decades now, Israel has been responsible for building their own “horrible history.” This woman’s beliefs fit right in with some of the worst of that.

So then I take it that you think Hahn was being honest when she wrote an article claiming that Clinton had plans to “Dissolve U.S. Border Within 100 Days,” and so you believe that’s the sort of made up horse shit that you and Randall Rose think we should be spending our time debating rather than just pointing out that it’s made up horse shit?

One of Hahn’s anti-immigration articles was headlined “Clinton Releases Plan to Dissolve U.S. Border Within 100 Days.”

This is an interesting article, but there are some flaws in it. However, the most important point of lesson to be gleaned from article is spot on: people who are obsessed with power for its own sake are evil. This is true regardless of which side they end up on. Veep is a takeoff on these types of people (and politicians & their staff in general), but Game of Thrones shows the serious side of this stuff (though Game of Thrones is about power in general, not just the lust for it). It really surprised me when I was in law school to learn that many of my classmates did not know what kind of law they wanted to practice when they started school. Really?! You want to fight for something in court, but you don’t know what? Same dynamics regarding young people in D.C. trying to get into politics.

I have a couple of bones to pick here:

“While Trump got far fewer votes than Clinton, California’s population is so large that the only other state where Trump got more votes was Texas (which he won). According to a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, California has more far-right conspiratorial “Patriot” groups, 81, than any other state in the country (Texas, the runner-up, has 79). California may be the “Left Coast,” but it is also the beating heart of the far-right coast.”

You can find cool people and assholes everywhere. The issue is their PROPORTIONS, not raw numbers or whether they exist in any particular place. There are about 40 million people in California, so we have everything here. Moreover, California is a state of extremes: the Bay Area is the most progressive area of anywhere near its size in the U.S., while the San Joaquin Valley (Fresno, Bakersfield, etc.) is extremely right wing/reactionary, and California Republicans are some of the most extreme ones. The fact that there are numbers of extreme right wingers in California doesn’t give a proper picture of the state as a whole; it depends on where you are. If you’re on the coast, especially in the L.A. or San Francisco areas, you’re probably surrounded by progressives. But if you’re in the Valley you’re probably surrounded by right wing Republicans. Furthermore, overall California is very liberal compared to the rest of the U.S.

Next, comparing spoiled rich kids to people from the Middle East whose societies have been destroyed by western Imperialism is ridiculous. Sure, some of the recruitment dynamics might be the same, but these so-called terrorists described in this article wouldn’t be susceptible to the indoctrination touched on here if not for their miserable conditions, which in turn are and were caused by countries like ours, mainly for cheap oil. In fact, most if not all of the people doing the recruiting would not be doing it if not for this.

Then there’s the totally polarized immigration issue, a point of focus of this article because of the book, where neither side even considers the concerns of the other. For its part, as this article shows, the left totally ignores the FACT that allowing massive numbers of people from other cultures into a country will change the culture of that country. Instead of ignoring or dishonestly trying to claim that this is not true, the left should be pointing out that 1) changing the culture is not necessarily a bad thing and 2) the culture won’t be changed that much because the people who want to come here generally like U.S. culture.

You have some very valid points. In regard to your last point concerning immigration and cultural change, the degree to which a culture will change and the degree of cultural assimilation will be, I assume, related to the immigration rate in relation to and especially as it affects the existing proportion of first generation immigrants in the population as well as cultural similarity or dissimilarity of the newcomers.

good points
i want to point out tho that in the instance of immigration, the US, and the planet, are already overpopulated. And in a compete-for-life operating environment, IMMIGRATION IS A BAD THING.

The problem with typical left wingers is; they are event oriented, not object oriented. This is why they are always on defense. This is why there is no goalpost for democratic campaigns. There is no finality, just a blind faith in the economic powers that rule the country.

Also, immigration from the south border is not simply like adding salt to flour. The effect of this sort of immigration is not a salting, its a spill. It’s one country literally moving over onto another. And under the circumstances it destabilises everything – visualise 50 people in a canoe.

“For its part, as this article shows, the left totally ignores the FACT that allowing massive numbers of people from other cultures into a country will change the culture of that country.” The United States has ALWAYS had massive numbers of people from other cultures coming into the country, given that it was actually FOUNDED on people coming here from other countries. The culture, such as it is, has changed with each succeeding wave of immigrants. It is one of this country’s strengths or would be if so many people weren’t so afraid of that with which they are not familiar. We have become a nation of cowards and that is a tragedy.

Only traditional Native Americans have the right to invite anyone here. We live on stolen land, period. The more people who come here, the more land gets stolen and/or destroyed. And our planet does not need more hyperconsumer Americans. This country is the Evil Empire and the more people who come here, the worse it becomes. The culture issue here is a minor detail in comparison.

The right doesn’t try to legislate over the progressive left, doesn’t try to restrict the Bill of Rights as the progressive left does (1st: Emanuel, Menino, Cuomo, Hobby Lobby, Chick-fil-A; Annise Parker, church sermon subpoenas. 2nd: Gun control, attempts at restriction of effective means of self defense. 4th: The western suburbs of Boston after the marathon. 10th: The western states and BLM….)

That’s why the progressive left wants a police state (and a domestic surveillance state that allows for enforcement of socialist policy), all enabled by a hyper-state Big Government.

The right wants to be left alone. The left wants to mandate; the left demands your inclusion against your will.

having read the comments below and seeing a lot of white apologists i do protest.
First off, i will talk the talk because i walk the walk. Caucasions in America have legitimate concerns.

There are 2 types of racism; one is stamp out the others racism and the other is nice-to-know-you-but-i-cannot-marry-you racism. The latter is the one where the so-called non-racists walk out their front door and go to work and be all nice and cordial. But back home, inside that door, it’s “i am not a racist but my family is all right”. So let’s not pretend that your son or daughter getting ready to intermarry is not panic time. FAMILIES OF DIFFERENT RACES HAVE ISSUES. And it’s big – real big. And it is NOT going to change no matter how pretentious people want to feel – not going to happen.

Marriage. right. Racism in america and EVERYWHERE ELSE survives because of marriage. Sure, there are exceptions but ONLY for those who can AFFORD it. IF you marry a person of another race, prepare to be disinherited.

Jobs. Being promoted to executive positions in regular private enterprises is near impossible if you are intermarried or of a different race. Again, such executive relationships are similar to marriage and family. I do not see that changing.

Dating. Ever been accused of “taking their women”? Try dodging bullets because some other-race jealous and angry competitor or brother doesnt want to deal with the differences.

Snarky claims that white people’s concerns about race are somehow ill are just that, snarky arrogance. I despise racism but i also recognize it’s permanency, especially in neighborhoods where common family to family likenesses have congealed over time. Guess who’s coming to dinner is a reality. Tough enough to deal with one and now we have to ask, guess who’s invading the country?

Slamming people together is not going to make racism vanish. The stability of europe is under attack because of what idiots in white america did. White people are the earth reshapers and the leave-the-planet-alone dwellers want the comforts that whitey has built – however poisoned they may be.

What’s the matter with white people? They always seem to outsmart themselves, and that is not smart. It’s an anxiety whites are afflicted, born with it. Gotta have that luxury and dirt and hot sun dont cut it. White people are just different. And fyi, i do not trust white people, they lie too much.

Then there is wallstreet, a predatory cartel that induces competition for life support and naturally that sort of competition demands an advantage. Choosing race is just simple and easy and people like simple and easy. This ungodly system threatens everyone every day and somehow people are going to bankrupt wallstreet and dispose of this wicked system that perpetuates racism when all some people have to do is simply sell their soul to bask in luxury?

Teaching people not to be racist in a perpetual life threatening environment IS A WASTE OF TIME.

Older people have bequeathed to us younger ones a world of retarded stereotypes and labels which they have written in stone. Very few elders* encourage us to think critically, universally and for ourselves – we are emphatically expected to fit in with one specific group or another (conservative, neoliberal, whatever) already circumscribed by our ‘wise’ predecessors.

A bridge between progressivism and conservatism is needed desperately, but the bequeathed, seemingly immovable rigid stereotyping has made an alliance (against the corruptions of corporatism, militarism, imperialism and oppressive policing – inclusive of the surveillance state) practically impossible. Some of us younger people say this as clearly as we can, but we are brusquely labeled – usually as idealistic ‘greens’ or ‘libertarians’ – nonetheless and thus ignored.

Progressivism and conservatism are two different ways of approaching the world, and that aren’t bridged. The former is a mindset of infantilism and dependency and theft, the other is a one that aspires to self accountability and liberty and cooperation.

It’s so nice when you reach out to heal the divide. It shows how much heart you have. Kidding!

Thanks, though, for demonstrating the stagnant thinking to which I’m referring. The future (if there is to be one for humanity) will have to step out of these stereotypes and retardation; once it is seen that the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ and the so-called ‘centrists’ are all useful to the corporatists, militarist and imperialists running things, the world can actually grow up.

This is precisely the sort of simpleton thinking that I’m talking about (and the so-called left is similarly stupid in its dismissal of libertarian non-aggression), and completely hypocritical too – since your ‘right wing’ as embodied by Trump et al is just as guilty of fostering big government as the corrupt titular left, if with more emphasis on select corporations, the military, oppressive policing, and interfering internationally with relentless insecure dominance.

You are as outdated as your opponents, and the future will be ruined by your insistence that this duopolist sham continues for generation after generation.

This is precisely the sort of simpleton thinking that I’m talking about (and the so-called left is similarly stupid in its dismissal of libertarian non-aggression), and completely hypocritical too – since your ‘right wing’ as embodied by Trump et al is just as guilty of fostering big government as the corrupt titular left, if with more emphasis on select corporations, the military, oppressive policing, and interfering internationally with relentless insecure dominance.

You are as outdated as your opponents, and the future will be ruined by your insistence that this duopolist sham continues for generation after generation.

Those are big words, Maisie, but you still don’t want to downsize that Big Government that funds it all with crony capital that was taxed at the muzzle of state firepower.

…you still don’t want to downsize that Big Government that funds it all with crony capital that was taxed at the muzzle of state firepower.

You don’t know how wasteful I find unnecessary expenditure of taxpayer money to be, nor have you ever asked me what I consider essential and non-essential government services, so your assessment of the extent to which I think statism should be undone is ignorant. I happen to think that crony capitalism (particularly regarding banks, energy corporations and silicon valley) are the most corrupt forms of corporatism and that the regulatory bodies supposedly containing them have been sold out to the same private enterprises they supposedly restrict, in a similar way to the travesty of insurance companies and Big Pharma being inappropriately influential in health care legislation under any system other than Single Payer.

I have some nuance and futurism to my approach, an ability to think outside the box of the stupid past – unlike you or the so-called ‘left’ that you oppose – and this is largely my point.

Neither Trump nor any other mainstream politician will stop building government’s power, using the same old unconstitutional abuses of state oppression to further entrench corruption, and I’m sure you know this. The fact that you and I have much to fight together for is lost completely on you because of outdated paradigms you insist as bluntly to retain as Clinton Democrats do theirs.

Why do you not instead write “…are the most corrupt forms of big government…”?

I do not write in your preferred (simplistic) language because I find it too limiting, just as I find the sloganeering of neoliberalism to be outdated, deceptive and trite.

‘Corporatism’ is the word I choose, due to it conveying the control of government by corporations – which I regard to be the larger problem. The size of government certainly affords this abuse but is not the sole cause, and there are some aspects of ‘big government’ that I would preserve in uncorrupted form.

‘Corporatism’ is the word I choose, due to it conveying the control of government by corporations – which I regard to be the larger problem.
‘Corporatism’ is the word you keep choosing but you refuse to acknowledge that it’s Big Government which allocates crony capital to corporations.

You obviously have no interest in comprehending or remotely acknowledging my point, but it’s okay – I didn’t presume you would suddenly act uncharacteristically, and my point is certainly far outside any intellectual comfort zone you appear to inhabit.

If you believe the existence of elite corporate monopolies would not exist without the singular boogeyman of ‘big government,’ your mindset only further exemplifies the kind of outmoded thought-patterns I was describing. Moreover, to focus on crony capitalism’s golden government goose is in a sense to treat (corporately owned) effect as cause – and in the larger picture of corruption regarding corporatism, militarism, oppressive policing and imperialism (to which I was trying gamely to engage our joint passion of resistance), such a narrow repetitive ‘jargon’ response from you indicates a heel-digging stubbornness that quite honestly just makes me sigh even while expecting no more.

Big Government is the only entity large enough to allocate crony capital to “corporatists

The nature of the capitalist business is to accumulate wealth and generate profit without regard to the common good. Without government regulation, that would only accelerate, naturally, though it has never been tried so we can’t be sure. But it’s easy to imagine that such a government-free system wouldn’t last very long before it collapses.

Governments are bad enough, but there’s some measure of accountability governments gave, and they do fear the populations they rule over. Corporations are accountable only to their shareholders, so you’d inevitably end up with a system of private tyranny no one could do anything about.

Nice try Peter. Everyone at the Intercept openly campaigned for Hillary Clinton — who represented continuity in regards to the Obama Administration. Because of that, the Intercept has no moral authority to ever bring up white supremacists since Obama armed Nazi groups in the Ukraine. That policy is a million times as fascist and white supremacist than what you are whining about now:

I tried Google. I tried Pirate Bay. I didn’t try the local libraries because they don’t have many of the most common works of fiction. And I’m not handing over my money to an alleged racist. To be sure, copyright remains the most important kind of censorship in this society, and it sucks! But if you think you’re going to leapfrog that into getting me to condemn some right-wing Trump supporter, not for real actions in the real world, but for liking a book I haven’t even read to have an opinion about, then you don’t understand me at all. And if you think that I’m going to go straight from condemning poor taste in literature to some kind of political action based on that, then again, you are not dealing with someone with that kind of superficial view of people. I’m not some Erdoganite willing to drum people out of employability based on their reading lists! And I hope many here are feeling the same way.

Those who oppose the so-called “far right” cannot afford to ape their ignorantist tactics. That way lies only despair.

When Hahn arrived in Washington, D.C., as another just-out-of-college aspirant, she was not political, according to every account of her that I’ve read and heard (I talked with more than a half dozen people who knew her at the University of Chicago).

Then you’ll have to ask yourself exactly why did she end up in Washington, DC, of all places, “as [just] another just-out-of-college aspirant.”

It must be a challenge to write such a long piece while including so few facts. Bannon recommended a book and saw a few parallels with modern life. The author concludes that Bannon agrees with every word in the book including calling minorities “little monsters”. LOL! Talk about a feeble-minded stretch in logic.

I like the Star Wars movies and I see parallels between Stars Wars and the modern world. I recommend that other people watch Star Wars. The bad guy in Star Wars wears a black outfit. The good guys in the original Star Wars movie are all white. Therefore, I must hate all black people and I’m a racist. All my political views are therefore invalid. All off my offspring should also be seen as racists, too. Welcome to the mind of Peter Maass.

Why does The Intercept dilute their good journalism with political hit pieces like this? It reflects poorly on The Intercept, not the targets.

The bad guy in Star Wars wears a black outfit. The good guys in the original Star Wars movie are all white.
INDEED. Noticed that.
Cars – big macho and black. It’s how white people worship blackness. Un gawa, black powwa. The mystique of dark as night. But nevertheless the pureness of driven snow never melts.

This is not an accident. People don’t like to be told what to think, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that an atmosphere of doctrinaire liberalism might produce reactionaries who delight in defying the dogmas that seemed so repressive when they were growing up.

Maas, you have the cart before the horse. California is a destination for the leftist, dependency-minded in the same way that Massachusetts and New York are. That’s why their populations are overwhelmingly progressive.

The latter two states are no less proportionately weighted by that political persuasion, yet you’re not claiming they’re hotbeds, too, of right-wing resistance by relative volume.

Maass is a literary midget compared to the author of The Camp of the Saints:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Raspail
(…)
During the first twenty years of his career Raspail traveled the world to discover populations threatened by their confrontation with modernity. He led a Tierra del Fuego–Alaska car trek in 1950–52 and, in 1954, a French research expedition to the land of the Incas. In 1981 his novel Moi, Antoine de Tounens, roi de Patagonie (‘I, Antoine of Tounens, King of Patagonia’) won the Grand Prix du Roman (award for a novel) of the Académie française.
(…)
Raspail was a candidate for the Académie française in 2000, for which he received the most votes[2] yet did not obtain the majority required for election to the vacant seat of Jean Guitton.
(…)
In 1970 the Académie française awarded Raspail its Jean Walter Prize for the whole of his work. In 2007 he was awarded the Grande Médaille d’Or des Explorations et Voyages de Découverte by the Société de géographie of France for the whole of his work.[4] In 2009, the Editions of Methuselah rewarded him the Wartburg Literary Award for the whole of his work.

Racism is an acquired taste. Bannon’s recomendation for reading about the invasion of France by people from India is spot on. The reason for this is because, believe it or not, white people are not the only racists on the planet. Fact is, INDIA is FULL OF RACISTS. In india, the caste system has it’s roots in the skin tone spectrum of light to dark. If you do not know an Indian persons well, you may not be aware of this. Mexicans? Let me tell you, but not here. So dont be laying the “whites are racists” guilt trip on whitey because white people have VALID CONCERNS about protecting themselves from being…… unnecessarily dominated. And btw, have you ever notice that some white people dont think of themselves as white?

“children in the novel were referred to as “little monsters,” and the adults were described as sexual maniacs who filled their ships with “rivers of sperm, streaming over bodies, oozing between breasts, and buttocks, and thighs, and lips, and fingers.” The novel ended with hundreds of thousands of them taking over France and, by extension, the West. “<—-You mean the way white founders of America did? Like when they raped black slaves with their rivers of sperm? Like that? You mean, they are imitating white slave masters?

For sure. And to whore themselves out to the media, and confine their relationship methods to gaming and competition, loving dogs that kill and war material. Early childhood conditioning, a disaster in progress.

“The Camp of the Saints” should be kept in the bathroom not for reading but for other duties as assigned. This book is a piece of crap that only idiots would bring up to support their views. Still immigration at levels that cannot or will not be assimilated into the laws and language of any host country can be disruptive. Bilingual is a good thing. Yes some accommodation is necessary and immigration at some generous reasonable level is a plus. However, that reasonable level must be defined by the host country. There is enough displacement, desperation and dysfunction in an over populated World to destroy any bastion of civilization and prosperity. It is the duty of prosperous nations to allow control but generous immigration, even more to see prosperity is achieved Worldwide. Prosperity for all is the core of any National Security. Uncontrolled immigrate will cause doors to slam-shut.

In order to combat mass immigration, which is mainly internal to developing countries, the causes of migration must be tackled: the impossibility of any development in the countries of departure, due to debts and structural adjustment policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the World Bank, the plundering of resources by multinationals and free trade.

We will start by denouncing the Economic Partnership Agreements between the EU and ACP countries [Africa, Caribbean and Pacific], whose consequences are to ruin the small peasantry and endanger the food sovereignty of the countries concerned. We will propose to our African partners to initiate a debt audit in order to challenge those that are illegitimate.

Pounding the drum over the xenophobic racist misogynistic supporters of Trump & Co. is not going to convince voters that they should support the neoliberal Clinton consensus of the corporate Democratic party.

It’s a transparent tactic, waving the fear flag to get people to support people like Clinton and the DNC’s Tom Perez – people who crafted and supported the very policies that created the widespread poverty that helped the far right’s political agenda. And, as it turns out, Trump, under pressure from the corporate media and the military-industrial complex, has essentially turned into Clinton on issues like NAFTA, China, foreign wars, hiring Goldman Sachs insiders, etc.

The only policy that makes sense any more is that spelled out by Melenchon supporters in France:

To begin, any reasonable project of emancipation must today take as its starting point the reality of climate change and the necessity of an ecological transition that implies a radical break in our mode of production and consumption. It is evident that this break cannot come about within the current neoliberal framework, and will require massive public intervention aimed at profoundly converting our economic and environmental model.

The project we support must simultaneously bring about a real economic and social transformation, without accepting any compromise with the dominant forces of finance and large industrial lobbies, and fight toe-to-toe to significantly reduce poverty and inequality, restore public services, and strengthen the power of workers in the workplace.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Raspail
In his most widely known work, The Camp of the Saints (1973), Raspail predicts the collapse of Western civilization owing to an overwhelming “tidal wave” of Third World immigration. The book has been translated into English, German, Spanish, Italian, Afrikaans, Czech, Dutch, Polish and Portuguese, and as of 2006 it had sold over 500,000 copies.

Young people turn to radicalism because they see no other way to securing a well paid job in the White House. Society must create an environment where they are given hope, otherwise they will act out of sheer desperation. It may start as a simple unpaid internship, but it quickly escalates into a full time advisory position and then a permanent job in the White House. Obviously, if people are given options they wouldn’t choose such a destructive career path. So while it may be tempting to blame the individual in this story, we should acknowledge that we, as a society, are complicit in this sad state of affairs.

Did you miss the part of the story where Maass reports that Julia Hahn comes from fantastic inherited wealth? She had every option in the world and still whored herself out to the far right (maybe for proximity to political power…Maass never really says).

At my university our little band of right wingers was hardly noticed at all except as an occasional source of unintended humor. Most of them were just awkward misfits. A couple of them were intelligent, in the manner of people who are smart rather than wise.

This piece identified one of the factors leading to radicalization that is shaped by both nature and nurture; an intolerance of uncertainty. But I think that has to be combined with another factor that is more obscure. People who inherit great wealth and privilege spend almost every moment of their lives justifying their advantages. Those who earn their wealth don’t need to justify it but those with unearned wealth have to rationalize it in one form or another.

If you combine that need to rationalize advantage and privilege with an intolerance of uncertainty (the possibility that they could lose their advantages) you create a motivation to assume that wealth naturally equates with virtue regardless of how that wealth was obtained. That is not easy to do but the obverse case becomes the alternative: poverty and difference equates with sin and depravity.

This is the toxic cocktail that drives the far right – they think they deserve their unearned bounty only because “those people” over there are lazy, depraved creatures who want to take it from them. And they are deeply afraid that those people, who actually work for a living, deserve wealth more than they do.

If you combine that need to rationalize advantage and privilege with an intolerance of uncertainty (the possibility that they could lose their advantages) you create a motivation to assume that wealth naturally equates with virtue regardless of how that wealth was obtained.

But I’m afraid it applies to neoliberal elites like Chelsea Clinton just as much as it does to Julia Hahn. Both come from aristocratic privileged backgrounds, neither are products of any kind of “meritocracy”.

This is true for all recent American political leaders. The Clintons, after all, without plutocratic support? Hillary would be flogging subprime loans back in Arkansas while Bill stayed home glued to Internet porn. GW Bush without daddy’s political influence? At most he was qualified to be a front-door greeter at Walmart, maybe a bellhop at a fancy hotel. Donald Trump without his daddy’s money? Used car dealer in New Jersey, certainly.

1. The name Clinton is mentioned zero times in the article, yet you bring it up in nearly every comment.
2. Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar. Your willingness to describe him as a backwoods bumpkin simply because he grew up in Arkansas says a lot more about your ignorance than it does anything related to the article itself.

I would agree, the whole political spectrum has been tilted to the right in both parties by the wealthy making sure that politics serves capital not labor. The marginal difference is the right wing’s greater intolerance of uncertainty, that is the secret sauce of racism.

Si1ver1ock has accurately captured the depth and persuasiveness of Maass’ dreck, whereas you have evidently conjured up a complex (or, anyway not “simple-minded”) theme” which does not exist in this simpleton’s self-unaware output : “Me: good, Hahn:bad, Ipse dixit”.

They want that the country goes back to someone? Well, what about the natives.

And is really funny this history about this stupid book. Because, who invaded and destroyed the way of life of traditional cultures were the europeans. The biggest genocides of human history were perpretaded by europeans, mainly portuguese, spanish, british people and french

That is factually false…. WAY false. The myth comes from the white guilt you were inculcated with in college and through media. I’m sure you feel very satisfied with yourself for saying it.

By far, the biggest genocides in history were perpetrated by the communists on their own people as part of the glorious revolution. Pol Pot killed 1.7 million in Cambodia– 1/3 of the population. In Russia, it was 25 million. In China 65 million.

No country is without sin in this regard, but none can hold a candle to the communists of the 20th century.